F. Scott Fitzgerald once said there are no second acts in American lives. However, after having spent 20 years in the IT industry, serving in various roles from system administration to network engineer (10 of which have been in education), I’ve recently decided that my second act should be as a freelance writer covering the investor's view of the technology industry. My background in engineering gave me what I consider strong analytical skills. My 15 years of trading and investing gives me the experience to assess equities and appraise their value. I am a Warren Buffett disciple that bases investment decisions on the quality of a company's management, its growth prospects, return on equity and price-to-earnings ratio. I employ conservative strategies to increase capital while also keeping a watchful eye on macro-economic events to mitigate downside risk.

Apple Gets Robbed Again In Las Vegas

I’m not a person that gets annoyed very easily. But remarkably, time and time again Samsung has figured out a way to get under my skin. I get it – the company wants to be “East Apple.” It’s a good goal to have. Heck, everybody wants to be Apple.

Then again, after Apple was awarded $1 billion in damages after a federal jury found sufficient evidence to determine that Samsung willfully infringed upon several Apple patents, you would think that Samsung would cease its “Apple flattery” right – think again.

Take a look at the images above. To the left is a very familiar logo of Apple’s popular Siri voice control feature. To the right is the logo of Samsung’s new voice recognition feature called “S-Recommendation” which was unveiled at the CES event and is expected to be released later this year.

Now, if these two images don’t strike you as identical – take a second look. Perhaps you should even take a third and a fourth glance if you are not annoyed by the blatant theft. There will be Samsung apologists that will claim that the logos are not that similar – but c’mon.

Of all of the voice-related indicators that are out there, you mean to tell me it had to have been a microphone that Samsung selected? And it’s not as if an executives meeting was not required to vote on this unveiling. What were the discussions like? Am I to believe that not one of them “thought” that the chosen logo closely resembles Siri?

Although the two tech rivals recently agreed to peace, no love is lost. However, in Samsung’s case, there’s clearly no shame either. Apple has not commented on the logo and emails to company officials have immediately been returned. But suffice it to say, despite Apple’s perceived inability to innovate against the likes of Google, Microsoft and a resurgent RIM, Apple remains the standard in every category the matters. Unfortunately, this keeps its lawyers employed.

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JarJar, How do you trademark a graphic image of an item that exists? Did someone trademark a graphic image of the sun, so EVERYONE in the world that draws a symbol of the sun is due to be sued for trademark infringement?

And you make inference to ME as making stupid statements? LMAO!!!!!!!

You have NO clue what you are talking about!

Did the creator of Peanuts (i.e. Charlie Brown) sue the creator of RugRats? Both have cartoon children with mostly bald heads with just a few hairs … “copies” according to your standards.

That icon has been used at least as far back as April of 2009 with the release of Android Cupcake. Here’s a screen shot of the now very dated looking UI but with the mic clearly visible. Also, Android keyboards have had that mic icon for ages.

The idea that using this type of microphone logo for voice input was an invention of Apple is definitely re-inventing history.

That specific type of logo was used in Android long before Apple used it for Siri on iOS.

The voice entry search feature was added to Android with the “Donut”version of the phone OS in September 2009, more than two years before Siri was released. Here’s a screen shot of Android at that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Android_1.6_Home_Screen.jpg

And of course, that type of microphone has been used for voice input in other software going back even further. I’m just talking for phone use here.

It’s a quickly recognized depiction and tells users how to activate voice input quickly and easily.

I have no interest in suggesting that Apple shouldn’t use such an obvious image but it’s pretty clear that Samsung has a longer history with this type of icon than Apple does.

Yeah, it’s missing some essential element to be a copy though, or rather elements: soul, polish, cool; just like a VW bug looks kinda like a Porche 911. I mean sure the basic image is similar, but look at the clunkyness of the copy, the black mic looks like it was drawn by hand and the border with the hard edged overlapping color, looks like it was quickly done with tape or something.